Machine learning approach to monitor inkjet jetting status based on the piezo self-sensing

One of the advantages of inkjet printing in digital manufacturing is the ability to use multiple nozzles simultaneously to improve the productivity of the processes. However, the use of multiple nozzles makes inkjet status monitoring more difficult. The jetting nozzles must be carefully selected to ensure the quality of printed products, which is challenging for most inkjet processes that use multi-nozzles. In this article, we improved inkjet print head monitoring based on self-sensing signals by using machine learning algorithms. Specifically, supervised machine learning models were used to classify nozzle jetting conditions. For this purpose, the self-sensing signals were acquired, and the feature information was extracted for training. A vision algorithm was developed to label the nozzle status for classification. The trained models showed that the classification accuracy is higher than 99.6% when self-sensing signals are used for monitoring. We also proposed a so-called hybrid monitoring method using trained machine learning models, which divides the feature space into three regions based on predicted jetting probability: certain jetting, certain non-jetting, and doubt regions. Then, the nozzles with uncertain status in the doubt region can be verified by jet visualization to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the monitoring process.